Shame, that deep burning sensation that seems to dig all the way down to the core of who we are, is a feeling that journalist Melissa Petro is well acquainted with. In 2012, when she was teaching at a New York City elementary school, she published an op-ed in which she disclosed that she was a former sex worker. Overnight, she became the unwilling cover girl of the New York Post; the tabloid’s cruel, mocking coverage continued until she resigned months later.

It would be fair to think that Petro is uniquely qualified to speak on the subject of shame. But in Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification, Petro insists that she is not unique. Shame is a weapon of control that has been deployed to great effect against women and femmes for centuries. Equal parts self-help, memoir and social investigation, Petro’s triumphant debut methodically presents how shame has pervaded almost every aspect of our lives, and offers up ways to free ourselves from it.

Differentiating shame from other emotions, like guilt and humiliation, Petro argues that shame causes us to believe there is something fundamentally flawed in how we are. She interviews a diverse group of women, including trans women and gender nonconforming nonbinary people, to capture a feeling both universal and deeply personal: Shy, a queer Black woman, describes how the early pressure she felt to be “a good, clean, god-​fearing, heterosexual Christian” drove her to be suicidal. Ariel, a disability activist who has a facial disfigurement, shares how being pointed at in public elicits a reaction that she later feels ashamed about. Brazen, a fat woman who has experienced a lifetime of body shaming, found empowerment through sex work and “being paid to have my body worshipped, adored, cared for.”

In Shame on You, Petro invites us to get “quiet and curious” in our efforts to flush shame into the light and challenge its control over our lives.

Psychologist Jamil Zaki, who studies kindness and empathy as the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, begins his book with an unexpected confession: “In private, I’m a cynic, prone to seeing the worst in people.” The book is inspired by his colleague and friend Emile Bruneau, a psychologist who built a study of the “neuroscience of peace.” Bruneau believed that hope could change the world, and maintained that belief up until his death from terminal brain cancer in 2020, at age 47. Bruneau “diagnosed triggers that inspire hatred, and then designed psychological treatments to reduce conflict and build compassion.”

Bruneau died during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Zaki lost all hope. He realized, to his chagrin, that he had become cynical. Being a scientist, he began to take a hard look at this outlook. In Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, Zaki shows how and why cynicism is a harmful social disease, and what we can do about it.

In the first illuminating section, “Unlearning Cynicism,” Zaki identifies key differences between a cynical mindset, which is invariably negative, and a skeptical mindset, which allows room for hope. This section also lays out the conditions for today’s high levels of cynicism, noting that corruption and inequality can leave people feeling helpless and like they are unable to make a difference. And it offers persuasive research on perception, noting how often we misperceive others’ motivations (for instance, research shows that most people like helping others, though most of us think otherwise) and shares historical episodes that illustrate how overly negative assumptions can lead to catastrophic decisions.

Later sections offer narratives of people whose hopeful mindsets have led them to change their communities for the better. Throughout, Zaki shares his own failures to stay hopeful, recounting his conversations with Bruneau and Bruneau’s widow, and he explores the factors that may have contributed to Bruneau’s optimistic outlook. Hope for Cynics is a timely guide, and Zaki’s tribute to his radically hopeful friend adds an endearing, personal layer to this book.